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Ghosts and Ghouls andThings That Go Bump In The Night
One year, when I was around 13....Santa Claus brought me a Ouija Board for Christmas. I was fascinated. It seemed at once awesome and mysterious. I really didn't think of it as being much more than an advanced sort of child's game and for the first little while I didn't do anything more with it than sit on the floor in my bedroom and ask it if certain boys liked me or not. That, and the question of which one of the Osmonds I would marry when I grew up, were uppermost in my mind in those days.
My mother, however, had other ideas.....she was always very tuned in to the paranormal. She decided one afternoon that we were going to go on the Ouija board together. Her father had died only a few years previously. The night he died, he had telephoned her at the moment of his death.......yes, I know that sounds impossible, but it's very true. I was 10 at the time and we hadn't had a telephone for very long, and when it rang that night I was still awake. I distinctly remembered the excitement in my mother's voice as she answered it, ringing out with the word "Daddy" after picking it up. Phone calls in those days were few and far between, and a long distance one like that would have been a real rarity. She talked to him for a few minutes and then...magically the voice on the telephone changed to one of my dad's friends, with a strong French Accent and he was asking my mother if my father could stay longer at the mess (Friday night, drinking night...and wouldn't you be plenty miffed if your husband did that to you ladies?) Early the next morning the telephone rang again.....this time it was a telegram telling my mother that her father had passed away the night before.
My mother had always felt there was something fishy about my grandfather's death. He hadn't been very old and was in pretty good health when it happened. My grandmother had died a few years before that and my grandfather married not too long afterwards to a lady that had been widowed several times before...and each time she had accumulated more wealth in the way of property and money. My parents took the long flight from Manitoba to Nova Scotia that very night to go to my grandfather's funeral....but there were many questions in my mother's mind after that aboutthe way my grandfather died... the will was never found....a newspaper sitting on the kitchen table in my grandfather's house with the words written on it saying..."We'll get him tonight."....the fact that my grandfather supposedly fell out of bed after having a heart attack, but his face and head were so swollen and bruised that nobody could recognize him...the fact that he was buried within 3 days of dying, and the attending Doctor at his death had been a personal friend of my mother's step mother...just to name a few. She saw the Ouija board as a way of getting answers she so badly needed to these questions that plagued her mind.
I was the lucky recipient of being picked to be her partner on this momentous occasion. First she took the pointer and rubbed it all over our Siamese cat's back for luck and power, and then she wiped it carefully with a silk scarf. The curtains in the room were drawn and the only light was the light from several flickering candles on the coffee table. We sat down on the couch next to each other, knees touching and began. The atmosphere in the room was so thick you could cut it with a knife...my sister sat over in the corner watching. I'm not sure what her thoughts were at the time, but I admit...I was a bit afraid. We sat there with our fingers on the pointer....curled....baby fingers touching and waited......sure enough the darn thing began to move...and I swear I wasn't the one moving it....the hairs began to stand up on the back of my head as my mother began to chant...."Oh Ouija....we've come to seek your guidance..." It spelled out hello....then the Ouija board began to talk to her...spelling out words and phrases and sentences...asking her how she was and saying things to her that only my grandparents (both deceased) would know or say....she didn't even have to ask it a question...it told her everything....how my grandfather had tried to call her the night he died to say goodbye before he left this realm for the next and how my grandmother had been waiting for him at the gates when he got to the other side. It then went on to tell her exactly what had happened the night he died.....
It said that he and the step mom had been drinking and, inevitably as always...they had ended up arguing about their wills. She wouldn't change hers and was always on at him to change his...to leave everything to her. He told her that, not only was he not going tochange his, but he was going to go the next day and leave everything to my mother.....that night in the wee hours of the morning he got up to go to the bathroom and his wife's brother came up behind him and hit him on the head with a hammer as he stood in front of the toilet. (The brother always lived with them) They then dragged him out of the bathroom and through the living room and left him next to the bed on the floor, where they beat him around the head and body some more with a broom.....until he died.....
I wanted this to stop...tears were running down my face, but my mother fueled by all that the Ouija had told her was not satisfied until she had all the answers she wanted. The creepiest thing about it was that everything the Ouija board had said had gone through my mind before it was spelled out on the board....and it was stuff I could never have known...things my grandparents said to my mother that day were things I could never have imagined....and I promise you with every ounce of my being...I did not push that pointer to spell out any of those answers....that damn Ouija board was using me as a channel...I am sure of it, to this very day, I am sure of it.
After things calmed down a bit my mother got on the telephone right away to her sister and told her everything that had transpired during our session......things started to fall into place...her sister told her that she had been at the house early the morning after and that there had been two drag marks across the carpet in the living room from the bathroom to the bedroom and when she asked my mother's stepmother about them she told her that Freddie (her brother) had been moving some furniture. The writing on the newspaper...had been explained to them when it was questioned, that the village dummy had been there that day and they had been telling him about something that was going to be on the television that night...there was no doubt in my mother's or her sister's minds....my grandfather had been murdered.
My mom did go to the RCMP with it....and nothing ever happened. We used to go visit the stepmom occasionally and I think on one occasion my sister snuck into her bedroom and looked for the will....the Ouija board had told us it was in the top dresser drawer...but the drawer was locked when my sister checked. (She was always the gutsy one) I never felt comfortable in that woman's presenceagain, and after my oldest son was born he would never go to her. He always cried if she tried to pick him up or talk to him. She lived to be quite old, but at the end of her days, alone and feeble, she put all her trust in my cousin Danny, who was quite a jack the lad, and he ended up getting everything and spending all her money anyways.
After that afternoon, I never touched the Ouija board again...that incident cured me. The board spent the last days of it's life in a box, tucked in the bottom of a hall closet, it's mysterious powers never to be used again. They had a bad fire in my Aunt's house several years later, and there were only a few things that weren't consumed.....her bible and her teeth that had been sitting on it....and the pointer of their Ouija board.....which mysteriously was pointing towards the stove...which ended up being where the fire had started.....co-incidence? You decide....
And now for your Halloween enjoyment I give you:
*Spooky Shepherd's Pie*
Serves 6
This tasty recipe came from out of one of those Grocery Store counter magazines. The picture on the recipe is really cute. This is a real winner to make for the kids on Halloween. It looks Spooktacular! If yours are like mine were, it was a nightmare getting them to eat any supper at all on that night. This should help!
1 pound extra lean ground beef
1 clove garlic, minced
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 ½ cups frozen mixed vegetables (peas, carrots, corn, green beans)
1 (14 ½ oz) tin of Italian chopped tomatoes, untrained
1 (12 oz) jar of beef gravy
3 cups mashed potatoes
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 egg, slightly beaten
Heat oven to 190*C/375*F. Spray a 12 inch skillet with cooking spray and brown the ground beef, garlic and onions over medium high heat for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain, if necessary.
Set aside 12 peas from the mixed vegetables for garnish. Add the remaining frozen vegetables, tomatoes, and gravy to the ground beef. Heat to boiling. Reduce the heat to medium low, cover and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes or until the vegetables are crisp tender, stirring occasionally. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed. Spoon the ground beef mixture into an un-greased 8 inch square baking dish.
Mix together the mashed potatoes, Parmesan cheese and egg. Spoon onto the hot beef mixture in upright mounds to resemble ghosts. Place 2 reserved peas on each mound to resemble eyes. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until potatoes are set and mixture is thoroughly heated.
*you can add other seasoning to this if you wish. Use your initiative!
Written by mariealicejoan Blog about this entry |
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It was Donnie of course...so I guess I'm a little bit rock and roll! ;-)
Marie -
I haven't gone near a Ouija board ever since I read The Exorcist. Too creepy.
Which Osmond did you have a crush on? Because I had a thing for Marie, and, yes now I can't get that silly song out of my head "I'm a little bit country, and I'm a little bit rock n roll, I'm a little bit of Nashville, with a little bit of Motown in my soul...."
Fred
http://journals.aol.com/ravenjuiced/those-eyes-that-the-che rubim-dre/ -
Wow Marie - what a family history. Your poor grandfather. No one deserves to die in such a way. Thanks for telling it. The shepherd's pie looks scrummy. I think I will try it for Halloween.
Kate.
http://journals.aol.co.uk/bobandkate/AnAnalysisofLife/ -
Marie that is a powerful story ,those things can be so upsetting ,but they do serve to prove there are things we cant understand ....Jan xx
28/10/06 04:46